Notes on Commons, Poetry, and Climate Justice

Burnaby Mountain Revisited

First there were two or three of us. Then there were a few more, searching amongst trees in the park. Then there were more than the 13 trees cut down for seismic testing. We were growing in a forest on a mountain, mushrooms or mitochondria. And bear and deer and racoon were with us. Underneath the canopy, the bestiary. A pipe could not be put through predatory or for pretext was our mandate. Question: what is horizontal directional drilling anyway? Answer: depends on how deep you imagine unceded goes—bedrock and beyond? Then there were more than 31 and then there were more than 301. The barricade was made more from people and what transpired between people and more people than it was the junk hauled out of the woods and piled at the borehole. And bear and deer and racoons and ravens. Maybe we were animals coming to the nearness of other animals releasing a social hormone or howl or moan and attracting us and others sensing this and howling or moaning back and joining us. And children and grandmothers and queers and punks. Then there were more and more or really just barely enough in the end which was no end or resolution. Morning under tarps blue light was sublime congress. Evening and ghost cars and drones did not dissuade. Sacred fire. Drumming. I will forever recall walking through yellow wood towards a horizon or object not of this world that is of this world that was passed person to person invisible like solidarity until each person was full of this thing that was tomorrowing when cops and courts and coordinates intervened as systems of public doubt and private accumulation. And yet still we are gathering and burning and drumming. Still animals. Still only beginning.